PL152008@tecmtyvm.mty.itesm.mx (Gustavo Gomez-E. Martinez) (03/29/90)
I want to know some things about some languages ...
this languages are Ada, Basic, C, Lisp, Modula, Pascal and Prolog, and
the things I want to know are:
1. Why that name? (where the name comes from?)
2. What data types it handles?
3. What advantages it offers?
4. Which languages can interact with?
Thanks in advance.
-ggem.
Monterrey Institute of Technology
Monterrey Mexico.
PL152008@tecmtyvm.mty.itesm.mx PL152008@tecmtyvm.bitnet
al152008@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx al152008%mtecv2@tecmtyvm.bitnet
#u8515682@wolfen.cc.uow.oz (Wayne Jefferson DOUST) (03/30/90)
In article <90087.215030PL152008@tecmtyvm.mty.itesm.mx>, PL152008@tecmtyvm.mty.itesm.mx (Gustavo Gomez-E. Martinez) writes: > I want to know some things about some languages ... > > this languages are Ada, Basic, C, Lisp, Modula, Pascal and Prolog, and > the things I want to know are: > 1. Why that name? (where the name comes from?) > 2. What data types it handles? > 3. What advantages it offers? > 4. Which languages can interact with? > > Thanks in advance. > > > -ggem. > Monterrey Institute of Technology > Monterrey Mexico. > I hope these facts are correct, I'm reasonably sure about most of them anyway: BASIC - 1. Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Created as an introductory computer language and was never intended for serious use. 2. Strings, Integers, Floating point data types. Arrays of all these may be used. There are so many different versions of Basic that there is no real standard, however, the notations are usually '$' for a string; '%' for an integer and all others are floating point. Some Basic interpreters will accept anything as a variable name & others will only accept one to two characters & others are different still. In general the following variables will work with the majority of interpreters: A$ - String variable e.g A$="HI" A% - Integer var. e.g. A%=5 A - Floating pt. e.g. A=5.2 Most basics are not strongly typed so operations between types are okay. 3 Advantages: Simple, easy to learn, interpreted good for writing a quick number crunching programme in 5 minutes, readily available, cheap to buy, well supported. Disadvantages: slooooow, not structured, no real standard, does not support enumerated types, doesn't REAllY support function calls, cannot use recursion. Cannot do all that much really. 4 Very poor interaction with the outside world other than reading and writing data to files and standard I/O. PASCAL - 1 Developed by Nikolas Wirth at Dartemouthe (I think) after ALGOL 66 was released and Wirth didn't like it. So he wrote his own programming language. Pascal is written to follow the Axiom that only three control structures are required to write any programme. In short, Wirth wrote it as a teaching language to teach students to write stuctured and modular programmes. The language forces you to write structured programmes. The name? I believe he was just a fan of Blaise Pascal the famous French Mathematician and Scientist. 2 Heaps of data types, not one there that you want? Well! make your own! Pascal is very strongly typed and this can sometimes be a pain. Variable's can be called just about anything you like. Typical data types include: int,longint, char, real, double, record and others that I can't think of off the top of my head. Variant record's are supported but these can be fiddly. 3 Advantages: Modularity, structured, supports recursion enumerated types, compiled. Disadvantages: A bit TOO strongly typed, you're forced to programme stuctured, fast but not as fast as say C, source code is usually laboriously long and heavily indented. Wirth apparently was surprised at the amount of use Pascal had in industry so he wrote MODULA - 2 to supercede Pascal. I haven't used it but I'm told it is superior, compiles better and faster, and the programming difficulties inherent in Pascal are overcome. The other problems remain 4. Interaction is pretty good. You can call any executable programme from Pascal as though it were a function or procedure and pass data to and from them. You cannot, however, run a programme from Pascal. I'm not sure about MODULA - 2. C Originally developed at Bell Lab's in the early 70's on a PDP-11 by 2 of the Lab's employee's. Bell lab's were working previously on a new language called A which they couldn't get off the ground. They used the research on A to develop B, but it didn't quite get there either. Bell labs decided it was a money pit and left it to die. Two programmers there got permission to use a clapped out PDP-11 (or 8 I can't remeber) to work on it as a hobby. The result was C. 2 C will support most data types and because of the flexibilty of the language you can always create your own. Typing does not exist though so the word is BE CAREFUL. You might not only junk your programme but your entire workspace if your not careful. 3 C is very powerful and will let you do just about anything. Because it is a medium level language the code compiles almost as compactly as an assembly language programme but without the horrible source code and is almost as fast in execution. Disadvantages: Not a language for beginners - you can really hang yourself if you're not careful, confusing code, it is possible to write unintelligle programmes that work but nobody else will be able to work out why - and yes - they exist. 4 Excellent interaction, you can actually write a Unix operating system in C, run it,and call up C again to compile Unix again (Masochist's only) In fact most standard C functions are actually programmes that C calls that are appended to your programme upon compiling. So you call pass parameters to your programme or use your programme as a function or have it call itself recursively. MODULA All I can tell you is that it is a structured language using modules, hence the name. PROLOG All I can tell you is that the language consists of logic statements. ie PRogramming in LOGic. LISP & ADA I can't help you with. Sorry. Wayne > al152008@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx al152008%mtecv2@tecmtyvm.bitnet > > #